Transcript Religious Life c. 1500 - the University of Warwick

Religious Life in 1500
The European World
Week 7
Anastasia Stylianou ([email protected])
Structure of Lecture:
• Introduction
• Christendom in 1500
• Historiography
• Structure of the Church
• Reforming the Church
• Religious life of the Individual
• Challenges to the Church
• Conclusion
Structure of Lecture:
• Introduction
• Christendom in 1500
• Historiography
• Structure of the Church
• Reforming the Church
• Religious life of the Individual
• Challenges to the Church
• Conclusion
Europe in 1050
(Christendom)
Europe
in 1600
Structure of Lecture:
• Introduction
• Christendom in 1500
• Historiography
• Structure of the Church
• Reforming the Church
• Religious life of the Individual
• Challenges to the Church
• Conclusion
• 'The threat to the authority of the Church around 1500 came
from too much lay piety, rather than too little'. Discuss.
• Why did Luther's ideas find such a receptive audience in
Germany in the early years of his protest against Rome?
• What was 'new' about Martin Luther?
• To what extent did the religion practised by the Catholic laity
change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?
Historiography
A. G. Dickens, The
English
Reformation (1964)
C. Haigh, Reformation
and Resistance in Tudor
Lancashire (1975)
E. Duffy, The Stripping
of the Altars (1992)
Structure of Lecture:
• Introduction
• Christendom in 1500
• Historiography
• Structure of the Church
• Reforming the Church
• Religious life of the Individual
• Challenges to the Church
• Conclusion
CLERGY
• Pope
• Cardinals
• Archbishops
• Bishops
• Priests
• Deacons
• Monastics (often)
LAITY
• King/Queen/Prince/Ruler
• Nobility
• Gentry
• Middling sort
• Ordinary people
Ordination
GLOSSARY:
-Apostolic
succession
Seven Sacraments
Secular priests
Regular clergy (=monastics)
GLOSSARY:
-Pluralism
St Mary’s church,
Halford
(Warwickshire),
built in the
12th century.
GLOSSARY:
-’Regula’ = Latin for
a rule
Secular priests
Regular clergy (=monastics)
Benedictine
Cistercian
Franciscan
Dominican
Furness Abbey (Lake District)
GLOSSARY:
- ‘Rule’: a set of
detailed
instructions
and principles
that laid out
how a monastic
Order should
live.
- ‘Order’: a
monastic group
(comprising of
multiple
monasteries,
usually spread
over different
territories and
countries) who
all followed the
same ‘Rule’
Furness Abbey today
Something to think about: what was the effect of the dissolution of
the monasteries?
Structure of Lecture:
• Introduction
• Christendom in 1500
• Historiography
• Structure of the Church
• Reforming the Church
• Religious life of the Individual
• Challenges to the Church
• Conclusion
Desiderius Erasmus
• Extract from In Praise of Folly (1509):
‘MONKS
Monks that Call Themselves Religious
And next these come those that
commonly call themselves the religious
and monks, most false in both titles, when
both a great part of them are farthest
from religion, and no men swarm thicker
in all places than themselves... For
whereas all men detest them to the
height, that they take it for ill luck to meet
one of them by chance…’
Saint Francis of Assisi – founder of the
Franciscan Order
Saint Dominic – Founder of the
Dominican Order
Speculum Sacerdotale (15th century
hagiography) = ‘Mirror of holiness’
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
• Papal schism
• Innocent II versus Anacletus II
• Bernard travelled around Europe
meeting with influential figures
such as the kings of England and
Sicily, trying to end the schism.
Pope Julius II (pope from 1503 to 1513)
• Desiderius Erasmus?, Iulius
Exclusus, 1514.
Could issue statements
called Papal Bulls,
which concerned
doctrine and practice
and which were binding
upon the whole of
Christendom.
Papal Bulls
Piis Fidelium (1493)
• gave Spain vicarial power to
appoint missionaries to the
Indies
Apostolici Regiminus (1513)
• condemned current heresies
concerning the human soul
• laid out the traditional Catholic
teaching that each person has a
soul and it is immortal.
Could issue statements
called Papal Bulls,
which concerned
doctrine and practice
and which were binding
upon the whole of
Christendom.
Could come together in
a Church Council, to
make decisions and
reforms concerning
doctrine and practice
which were binding
upon the whole of
Christendom.
Church Councils
Fourth Lateran Council (1215), sometimes called ‘The Great Council’.
Dealt with a wide range of issues, including:
• lay attendance at church and participation in the Eucharist
• clerical immorality and misconduct
• heresy.
Could issue statements
called Papal Bulls,
which concerned
doctrine and practice
and which were binding
upon the whole of
Christendom.
Could come together in
a Church Council, to
make decisions and
reforms concerning
doctrine and practice
which were binding
upon the whole of
Christendom.
Could come together in
local Councils, to make
decisions and reforms
concerning doctrine
and practice which
related to specific areas
or countries.
Structure of Lecture:
• Introduction
• Christendom in 1500
• Historiography
• Structure of the Church
• Reforming the Church
• Religious life of the Individual
• Challenges to the Church
• Conclusion
A cadaver tomb
Some of the Main Epidemic
Diseases:
- Black death (from 14th century)
- Sweating sickness from 1485
- Typhus (from 1489)
- Syphilis (from 1494)
- Typhoid
- Malaria
- Smallpox
- Influenza (the flu)
Some of the Main Epidemic
Diseases:
- Black death (from 14th century)
- Sweating sickness from 1485
- Typhus (from 1489)
- Syphilis (from 1494)
- Typhoid
- Malaria
- Smallpox
- Influenza (the flu)
Some Other Times of High Mortality
- Infancy and childhood
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Famine
- War
- Travel
- Natural disasters and bad weather
- Social unrest and violence
- Crime
Generally….
Unbaptised baby
Limbo Infantum
Saintly life
Baptised adult
Not a saint, but a
life of good
works, and no
unconfessed
mortal sins
Not a saint, and
not a good life,
but all confessed
and repented of
before death
Unconfessed mortal
sins
Heaven
For a shorter time
DEATH
Purgatory
For a longer time
Hell
12th
century
Doom
Painting
at
Chaldon
church,
Surrey
Popular Pilgrimage Sites
Pilgrim’s medallions from Santiago de
Compostella
Chantry chapel of St Mary the Virgin, Wakefield
‘I Jone Brytten of the parrische off Saynt Michaels in
Wodstrete, syke in my body, be quethe my sole unto
Allmyghty God and unto Owre Blessid Lady and unto all
the holli company in hevon …. [Out of the proceeds of
my goods, I desire:] … a prist shall syng for mi sole …
and all Cristin soles … for one halffe ere …’ (Sheils,
Reformation, document 13)
The painter Giotto’s
depiction of the healing of a
sick woman who had prayed
to St Francis of Assisi for
help.
Medieval prayer on
rosary beads
Relic of Saint
Ivo of
Kermartin
(1253-1303)
“[If all the relics were brought together in one
place]…it would be made manifest that every
Apostle has more than four bodies, and every
Saint two or three.” – John Calvin
Structure of Lecture:
• Introduction
• Christendom in 1500
• Historiography
• Structure of the Church
• Reforming the Church
• Religious life of the Individual
• Challenges to the Church
• Conclusion
Challenges to the Church of its own making:
Johann Tetzel: “as soon as a coin in the coffer
rings, the soul from purgatory springs”
Exaggeration of the power of indulgences
condemned by Catholic theologians like Cardinal
Cajetan.
• Papal schism (two rival popes)
• Often corrupt & worldly papacy
• Financial abuses – fake relics, sale of indulgences, heavy taxation
• Abuse of clerical privileges like ‘benefit of clergy’ (= their own law
courts)
• Immorality & negligence present among the clergy
External Challenge of Heresy
Including
• Waldensians
• Cathars
• Heretical Franciscans (a break-away sect from the [Catholic] Franciscan
Order)
• Heretical Beguins.
• Hussites
• Lollards
See Wakefield, Walter L. and Evans, Austin P., Heresies of the High Middle Ages, Number LXXXI of
the Records of Civilization Sources and Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969) for
some great extracts from medieval primary sources concerning heresy if you’re interested.
CATHARS
• Heresy present in southern Europe between the 12th
and 14th century.
• Dualist (the material world was evil and the nonmaterial world was good).
• Believed in equally powerful good and bad divine
powers.
THE LOLLARDS
English heresy begun by a theologian called John Wycliff in the
fourteenth century.
Like Protestants:
• believed that Scripture should be in English
• questioned the Catholic belief that the Eucharist was the real
body and blood of Christ
• questioned the need for chantry chapels and priests praying for
the dead
• tended towards iconoclasm
• disagreed with Catholic understand of priesthood
• believed the sacrament of confession was pointless
• rejected clerical celibacy.
External Challenge of Heresy
Including
• Waldensians
• Cathars
• Heretical Franciscans (a break-away sect from the [Catholic] Franciscan
Order)
• Heretical Beguins.
• Hussites
• Lollards
See Wakefield, Walter L. and Evans, Austin P., Heresies of the High Middle Ages, Number LXXXI of
the Records of Civilization Sources and Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969) for
some great extracts from medieval primary sources concerning heresy if you’re interested.
Structure of Lecture:
• Introduction
• Christendom in 1500
• Historiography
• Structure of the Church
• Reforming the Church
• Religious life of the Individual
• Challenges to the Church
• Conclusion
Any questions? Ask me now, or feel
free to email me at
[email protected]